Cartoons

Follow @BoredCricket

player profiles

Bored Invents

Amit Mishra may play in today’s one dayer. He last played in one more than six years’ back, in April 2003. Within less than ten days, Mishra made his debut and played his last ODI.

What does this tell you? The last ten years were booked for Bhajji and Jumbo. Between them they ate all the tests, ODIs, and T20s on offer. Why wouldn’t they, look at those cool nicknames – does Mishra have one?

Does anyone know how many first class wickets Amit Mishra has taken? How would you, even his mates and selectors don’t. Mishra did not exist before the IPL.

Mishra is a TV character, he was born on prime-time one IPL evening, playing for the Delhi Daredevils. Even then in season 1, his captain did not see obvious merit in his bowling. He didn’t play at first, then Vettori was sick, and he played. And boy, did he play.

Season 2, again, the Daredevils went the Vettori route, but Dan all but had his specks broken by a cranky Yusuf. Mishra was back, again. It took a special captain in Jatman, not to maximise Mishra in the semis, he preferred to bowl himself to a marauding Gilchrist.

Here we are on 28th September 2009, Dusherra. If Mishra is back, chances are, he may not be back for long. If for instance he bowls his ten overs for 71, that could be it. This may be his last game for another seven years.

He’ll need a five for, like his test debut, to stay on the selectors' radar.

Remember what happened to that guy called Ojha, the only way I remember his name is thinking Orange Juice, OJ, and a laugh – Ha! The OJ-Ha cricketer – how many people had the patience with Ojha?

He was born on prime time IPL too. And it’s because you and me saw it, the selectors could no longer afford to look away.

How much corporate money is there behind Ojha and Mishra – more than there is behind this blog, but that’s not saying much.

How much money rides on Bhajji’s inclusion in the side? You good at maths?

At Bored we like talking about Amit Mishra, no one else does; you can read more about him here – it’s usually cynical, depressive, but then, by now, so must be Mishra.

Hmmm...what about nayr - isn't it obvious that dhoni doesn't want him? How long is indian cricket team going to be personal fiefdom of mr dhoni?Wait, there's a new angle to this? Remember the small town big heart theory? Now, recall, where's mishra from? Nayar? Karthik?Rohit?

Mahek, this is a problem I face when presenting my arguments. When fit Zaheer and Sachin walk into the team - they dont need special favours for that.

We are talking about fringe cases -of these, we are talking about who gets more chances. So, look at my list closely. Ojha plays for Hyderabad, not a small town so he belongs to the big city small heart category. Mishra is a delhiite.

It is not about what team you play for - it is about what difficult small town circumstances you fight. BTW, Hyderabad is not a small team. It is high profile, and cricket infrastructure in Hyderabad is very good. Heck, in real India, Hyd is almost a metro.

So, yes, Dhoni perhaps finds soulmates in th smalltown-bigheart RPs and Pathans and Bhajjis and Praveen Kumars. Although Sreesanth is from a really small town!

Anyone who knows a thing or two about domestic cricket will tell you it's damn hard to make it to the Delhi side through hard work. That's why Mishra had to move to Haryana.

If you're going to use the IPL argument then I'd say all the teams belong to big cities so there isn't really any small-town big-town bias there. You could argue Mumbai is a bigger market than Jaipur but the salary cap means players will more or less get the same salary irrespective of what team they play for. Ishant is from Delhi and he's still been given a long rope, isn't it? Rohit Sharma got a long rope before he finally hung himself from it.

Too much is being made of these things. While Dhoni may prefer certain players over others, I don't think it's based on non-cricketing reasons. It's a pretty serious accusation to make and I don't like to judge players' character so I'll refrain from slating Dhoni on this.